


We Could Pretend

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Prompt Fills 2018 [37]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 04:12:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15088715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the books comment_fic prompt: "Marvel Cinematic Universe, Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes, 1920's Paris AU where Steve the poet and artist meets an aspiring novelist named James Barnes."The prompt was inspired by Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. The story was inspired by the film Midnight in Paris.





	We Could Pretend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SherlockianSyndromes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SherlockianSyndromes/gifts).



There was only so much of Tony, Natasha, Clint, and Rhodey a guy could take in one day. Natasha and Clint constantly  _looking_  at each other when they thought the other wouldn’t notice, Rhodey and Tony telling endless anecdotes about their college days was exhausting. Mostly because Steve wasn’t really one of them. Tony’s dad had taken a shine to Steve back when Steve was an orphan looking to get into art school. Steve had been selling miniatures at a street festival and Howard had been intrigued, and now Steve wasn’t quite one of the cool kids.

But Paris was beautiful, and Steve wanted to see it all, explore it all. He wanted to hang around Shakespeare & Co. and bask in the aura of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Eliot. He wanted to drink absinthe at a seedy bar in Montparnasse and stay up till dawn drawing strangers. He wanted to write poetry on a beautiful man’s skin and make love till noon and then walk hand-in-hand along the Seine in the dusk.

Unfortunately, he was stuck dogging Tony and the rest of his friends while Tony took them on special tours of all the big touristy sites. Steve was so lost in his head that he almost got left behind at the Louvre while he was communing with the Mona Lisa. She could see into his soul.

When Natasha broke out the expensive Russian vodka and proposed a game, Steve offered to go get the ice...and never went back. Instead of going back up to the penthouse, he left the hotel, stepped into the crisp spring air, and listened to the city. He wanted to find a place to watch the Eiffel Tower light up at night. He left his cell phone behind, because Tony wasn’t above hacking it and tracking him (and he had the skills to do so).

Steve tucked his hands into his pockets, strolled along the street, and was mildly surprised at how quiet the street behind the hotel was. Paris at midnight was supposed to be parties and romance, right?

Instead it was a dim alley with a cobblestone road and a single old-fashioned car rattling toward him. Steve was surprised when it pulled to a stop beside him, and a woman poked her head out of the passenger window. She was done up like a 1920’s flapper, with curls plastered to her head, feather earrings dangling long. She had a cigarette in a long holder between her index and middle fingers, and she took a puff as she eyed him up and down.

“Hey, you.”

Steve raised his eyebrows, pointed to himself.

She smiled. “You’re a regular hotsy-totsy. Hop in. We’re going to a party.” She talked like someone out of a black-and-white movie.

Steve had just avoided a party with people he knew. Did he want to party with strangers?

She winked at him. “Come on, don’t be a Mrs. Grundy.” She leaned further out the window and intoned, with the air of one imparting a great secret,  _“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”_

Eliot. The Wasteland. She knew poetry. Not that Tony and the others didn’t know poetry, but - they didn’t appreciate it like Steve did.

He straightened up and said, “All right.”

The woman smiled and popped the door open. Steve went to climb in and saw that the back of the car was already crowded with plenty of people, all also dressed like it was the 1920’s.

They greeted Steve without actually introducing themselves, and one of them leaned forward, shouted instructions to the driver in English.

“Are you all American?” Steve asked.

One of the men nodded. “Yes. Americans in Paris. It’s both fashionable and mundane.”

The others laughed.

The woman handed Steve a flute of champagne, which he sipped at cautiously while the car, which had lousy suspension, jolted and bounced through the streets of Paris, which all seemed quieter and less rushed. The car stopped out front of a house somewhere in Montparnasse, and Steve was carried along as everyone spilled out onto the pavement. The woman let herself into one of the doors, and everyone trooped up the stairs to a fabulous house party where everyone was also in costume.

Steve was wearing a rumpled suit, so he looked a little disheveled, but for the most part he fit in, because he kept his short hair neat.

“Zelda, you made it!” A woman materialized from the din of drunken laughter and haze of cigarette smoke.

There were cigarettes everywhere, and Steve was glad he’d taken his asthma meds that morning.

“Linda, darling, this party is fabulous,” the woman who’d invited Steve into the car said, and the women gave each other air kisses.

“Scott, come see what new song Cole’s working on,” Linda said.

Scott. Zelda.

Not...Francis Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald?

Obviously this was some kind of ornate historical role-playing dress-up event. Who did Steve reasonably think he could pretend to be? Or did he have to pretend to be anyone at all?

One of the men who’d been in the car with Steve and Zelda headed toward Linda, who led him and Zelda over to a piano in the corner where a man was playing. Steve drifted after them, not wanting to seem unsociable, and listened. Cole was incredibly talented on the piano.

Zelda lounged against it, posing, but Scott seemed to be ignoring her, instead focused on the song.

“Scott,” another man said, “the way you let this beautiful flower wilt without attention is just shameful.” He swept Zelda into his arms and began to dance with her, swaying to the music.

Steve looked at Scott, but he seemed unbothered by another man dancing with his wife.

The man dancing with Zelda was handsome, with red-brown hair and vividly blue eyes and a sly, wicked grin.

“This is why we’re friends, Bucky,” Scott said. “It takes two men to keep Zelda happy, and we can both do it without stepping on each other’s toes.”

Bucky threw his head back and laughed, spun Zelda around in dizzying circles, and she laughed with him, bright and musical. Bucky was beautiful.

The song ended, and Scott spoke earnestly to Cole about what he thought of the song. Bucky released Zelda, bowed gallantly over her hand. Then he straightened up - and looked Steve in the eye.

“Who’s this? I never forget a face.”

“We found him on the way here,” Zelda said. “Isn’t he lovely?”

Steve, who’d spent his entire life being Sam Wilson’s smaller, weaker, less attractive friend, and then being Tony Stark’s insignificant shadow, had never had anyone look at him the way Bucky was looking at him.

“Yes, he is,” Bucky said.

Steve cleared his throat. “I’m - I’m right here.”

“Yes you are.” Bucky prowled closer. “A present for me, Miss Z?”

“Because you please me so much,” Zelda said, and Steve was a little nervous.

But then Bucky offered a hand. “James Buchanan Barnes. Friends call me Bucky.”

Steve shook his hand. “Steve. Rogers. Nice to meet you. James.”

“You can call me Bucky. So, besides having a pretty face, how did Zelda convince you to come to one of Cole’s shindigs?”

“Poetry,” Steve said. “She - spoke poetry.”

“Ah. Are you a poet?”

“And an artist. I went to school for art, but - I illustrate a lot of my own poems.”

Bucky nodded, and he looked genuinely interested. “How’s that going for you?”

“I don’t have a job or any real marketable skills, but…” Steve shrugged.

“But you’re here.” Bucky smiled.

“What about you?” Steve asked. “What do you do?”

“I’m a novelist,” Bucky said. “Not nearly as good as, say, Ernest, but he and Gertrude deign to glance over my manuscripts once in a great while.”

Ernest Hemingway. Gertrude Stein. These people were really, really into this whole historical thing. Steve could play along.

“That’s nice of them.”

“Tell me, Steve,” Bucky said, and he drew Steve closer, into his arms, and started to sway.

Cole was playing something slow and sultry on the piano.

“What’s the best poem you’ve got?” Bucky leaned in, whispered in Steve’s ear.

They were dancing.

“I can’t even think right now,” Steve admitted, because he’d never been this close to so beautiful a person before, not like this.

Bucky laughed softly. “That’s all right. Dance with me now. We can talk poetry in the morning.”

Only in the morning, when Steve woke after a long night of dancing, drinking, and making love, he was back in his hotel room, alone in his bed even though he was pretty sure he’d fallen asleep in Bucky’s.

He was confused. Had last night been a dream? Would he see Bucky again? Had he gotten Bucky’s real name and phone number or email address or something?

When Steve was out with the others that day, poking through antique shops, he found a copy of an old, obscure novel,  _A Soldier’s Confession,_  written by James B. Barnes. It looked - old. According to the publishing information in the front, it had been published in 1923. Steve flipped through it, heart pounding.

On the flyleaf was a snatch of poetry that Steve knew like the back of his own hand, because he’d written it.

 _We could pretend,_  
_but never commit_  
 _to the loss._

Beneath the snatch of poetry was a sketch from Steve’s own pen, of two men dancing beside a piano.

He’d written those words and drawn that picture last night.

And sometime around 1923.

Beneath that, in handwriting he didn’t recognize, were the words _Midnight in Paris._

So that night, Steve went walking in the dim-lit alley behind the hotel, and when the old car pulled up and Zelda invited him to the party, he climbed in without hesitation - and Bucky kissed him hello.

**Author's Note:**

> The poetry Zelda quotes is from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland.
> 
> The poetry Steve writes actually belongs to SherlockianSyndromes: [The Storm Passes](https://master-madness.blogspot.com/2009/06/storm-passes.html)


End file.
